In the electronics industry, assembly machines or pick-and-place machines are used to produce printed circuit boards (PCB). The pick-and-place machines use a variety of components to build a PCB. The machine's head selectively picks components, held in feeders, from predetermined locations on an assembly table and places them on a printed circuit board. When the printed circuit board is completely populated the assembly machine populates the next board. These machines save a great deal of time and labor in populating PCBs. However, because of their large cost, they usually require a large production run in order to justify their expense. Just-in-time, manufacturing has reduced production run lengths. These shorter production runs result in the operator having to change from one product's setup to a second product's setup more frequently. This can result in errors and down time.
Verification systems for pick-and-place machines have been developed to increase the operator's accuracy in setting up the machines. These systems include using bar-codes on the component reels and reading these bar codes before placing the components onto the production table. They also use lights to direct the operator where to place the feeder onto the production table. In order to ensure the operator's accuracy in placing the feeders onto the assembly table, these systems require that the operator first remove all the existing feeders, then scan the feeders before placing them back on the table. Some of the components used in producing the first product may be the same components used in the second product. The process of taking all the component feeders off the table and the placing them back on the table wastes operator time and increases machine downtime. Other systems instruct the operator, with respect to each slot on the table, to remove, remove and add or just add a component. This process still does not use all the information available to the assembly machine. The assembly of the first product may use a component in one slot, and may use that same component in the second product but in a second slot. This information is not taken advantage of by either of the described systems.
Thus, there exists a need for a process which takes advantage of the full information available to the assembly machine to minimize the number of operator steps to change the setup from a first to a second product, or from no product to a first product.